Federal grant keeps Project Rose alive

News-Times, The (Danbury, CT)

Published 7:00 pm, Wednesday, January 26, 2005

"When I moved into our apartment, I had three end tables, a lamp, a TV and a mattress," said Gentile, 43, one of seven people chosen to join Danbury's Project Rose in December 2003. "I know I did it to myself. We were all down and out. We weren't living together. Project Rose saved my life."

This week, Danbury received a $142,000 federal grant to continue Project Rose for one more year. The two-year program is designed to help homeless families. The goal is for Gentile and six other participants to be self-sufficient a year from now.

The project helped each family find an apartment, develop skills to maintain and furnish that apartment, care for their children and find a job. A portion of their salary goes to pay each month's rent, and by the end of the second year they aim to earn enough to move into their own apartment. Along the way they say they are developing a sense of pride and a sense of worth.

"I didn't think I'd get anywhere," said Gentile, who stopped using drugs seven years ago. "I lost all the good things due to my disease."

To qualify, applicants had to be homeless, to have a child younger than 18, and have a disability, which could be drug addiction, HIV/AIDS or mental illness.

"It's horrible to say, but you couldn't just be homeless to qualify," said Patricia Bowen, assistant director of the city's Department of Welfare and Social Services. "There are a lot of supportive housing programs, but this program may be unique. We're guaranteeing housing for two years, and we're giving each family a case worker who is in their face once a week."

Bowen, who has worked in social services for 24 years, said for many of those years, she and department Director Deborah MacKenzie talked and dreamed about a program that would help break the cycle of welfare. When welfare ended in 1997, Bowen and MacKenzie were still looking.

Project Rose may be one good tool in that struggle, Bowen said.

The first year people worked on simple things, skills that many people take for granted, like paying bills on time, furnishing an apartment, finding a job, talking to the case worker and avoiding bad habits.

The second year will continue all of that, and include further work on financial independence to prepare each participant for the day when the federal funds run out in December 2005.

Of the seven original families, one family dropped out after a participant returned to drug use. Another family then joined the program.

"They started with nothing, and now they're all working. They're going to be working on their GED degrees. They've been working on bringing the children's dads into the picture," Bowen said. "That is very empowering for them. The courts are working on their behalf. They're getting money from the system and from a responsible adult. That's helped them feel like they think everybody else feels, empowered."